The addition of texture patterns to computer generated graphic images is a significant enhancement that is useful in a wide variety of visual image generation applications.
Accessing the texture map texel values, that generally must be obtained repeatedly from a memory that is off the chip that does the interpolation, is time consuming in the context of high quality graphical image generation. Conventional methods, therefore, generally require that the texture information be stored in uncompressed form in dedicated areas of memory to realize minimal acceptable time constraints.
Managing texture information via conventional techniques and with conventional hardware arrangements, therefore, is well known as being expensive and burdensome to a process that requires rapid generation of superior computer graphic images.
One method to provide acceptable quality video images is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,905,164 to Chandler et al. An expressed object of Chandler et al. is to obtain color cell texture modulation while minimizing hardware requirements.
Another attempt to reduce the hardware costs of texture processors is described in Sims et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,586,038. This method involves the use of texture and shading gradients in three dimensional space to define texture modulations.
Merz et al. describes, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,692,880, a video object generator with a texturing memory. The video object generator described therein has a data memory format whereby cell by cell object data for a plurality of objects are stored, retrieved and processed for video display.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,965,745, Economy et al. describes a method of texture data computation that reduces the quantity of bits used to represent the color intensity values of any given pixel. Computations are performed with fewer bits per pixel, and while Y values are processed at one level of detail, I and Q values are processed at a different level of detail.
A review of the prior efforts identified above reveals a need still exists for efficient computation of textures for visual display.